Persuasion: An Overview Persuasion: An Overview Categories: Jane Austen's Works , Media Reviews Tags: summary , synopsis 5 Comments Share this: Persuasion is Jane Austen’s last completed novel. She began it soon after she had finished Emma, completing it in August, 1816. She died, aged 41, in 1817, but Persuasion was not published until 1818. Persuasion is connected with Northanger Abbey not only by the fact that the two books were originally bound up in one volume and published together two years later, but also because both stories are set partly in Bath, a fashionable health resort with which Jane Austen was well acquainted, having lived there from 1801 to 1805. Readers of Persuasion might infer Jane Austen intended ‘persuasion’ as the working theme of the story. Certainly that theme is repeated several times, with vignettes within the story as variations on that theme. On the other hand, there is evidence that Austen did not have in mind such an explicit theme and variations.

It even appears she did not envision the title of the story as Persuasion; there is speculation that the title of the novel was chosen by her brother Henry or her sister Cassandra. Henry had long championed his sister’s writing, especially in business and publishing circles where he had more access than Cassandra. After Jane’s death it was he who arranged for publishing the novel, perhaps naming it in the process. Another speculation is that the two siblings collaborated in choosing the title. Some critics believe Austen intended to name the novel The Elliots but that she died without titling it. Plot Summary Anne Elliot Want to read the full article? Sign up for free Jane Austen Membership or if you are an existing user please login Existing Users Log In Amazon.com: Persuasion (9781936594511): Jane Austen: Books Jane Austen Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Review Anne Elliot, heroine of Austen's last novel, did something we can all relate to: Long ago, she let the love of her life get away. In this case, she had allowed herself to be persuaded by a trusted family friend that the young man she loved wasn't an adequate match, social stationwise, and that Anne could do better.

The novel opens some seven years after Anne sent her beau packing, and she's still alone. But then the guy she never stopped loving comes back from the sea. As always, Austen's storytelling is so confident, you can't help but allow yourself to be taken on the enjoyable journey. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition. Read more From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Stevenson has read all of Austen's novels for audiobook, in abridged or unabridged versions, and her experience shows in this delightful production. Though dominated by the intelligent, sweet voice of Anne Elliot—the least favored but most worthy of three daughters in a family with an old name but declining fortunes—Stevenson provides other characters with memorable voices as well. She reads Anne's haughty father's lines with a mixture of stuffiness and bluster, and Anne's sisters are portrayed with a hilariously flighty, breathy register that makes Austen's contempt for them palpable. Anne's voice is mostly measured and reasonable—an expression of her strong mind and spirit—but Stevenson imbues her speech with wonderful shades of passion as Anne is reacquainted with Capt.

Wentworth, whom she has continued to love despite being forced, years before, to reject him over status issues. Listening to Stevenson, as Anne, describe a sudden encounter with Wentworth, one hardly needs Austen's description of how Anne grows faint—Stevenson's perfectly judged and deeply felt reading has already shown that she must have. Even those who have read Austen's novels will find themselves loving this book all over again with Stevenson's evocative rendition ringing richly in their ears. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition. Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here , or download a FREE Kindle Reading App . New York Times best sellers Browse the New York Times best sellers in popular categories like Fiction, Nonfiction, Picture Books and more.

See more Product Details Publisher: Tribeca Books (November 2, 2013) Language: English Shipping Weight: 4 ounces ( View shipping rates and policies ) Average Customer Review: HALL OF FAME TOP 500 REVIEWER VINE VOICE on October 7, 2014 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase In Jane Austen's time, young women were taught that it was practically their duty to "marry well" -- someone of at least equal social/financial standing. But if a woman turned down a suitor for being poor, she ran the risk of losing the man she loved. That's the problem for Anne Elliott, the heroine of Jane Austen's final novel "Persuasion" -- a delicate romance that takes place AFTER the romance, rejection and heartrending sorrow. There's some slight roughness around the edges, but the story and the characters are simply brilliant. Eight years ago, Anne Elliott was engaged to the handsome, intelligent and impoverished sailor Frederick Wentworth, but was persuaded to dump him by the family friend Lady Russell. Now she's twenty-seven (ancient by the time's standards), and her vain father Sir Walter is facing financial ruin.

So he decides to relocate to Bath and rent out the vast family estate -- and it turns out that the new tenant is Frederick's brother-in-law. Of course, Anne still loves Frederick, but he doesn't seem to feel the same, especially since he's rumored to be interested in some younger, flirtier girls. And Anne's worries increase when she joins her family in Bath, where her father is attempting to live the lifestyle he feels he deserves (since he's a baronet). His heir, William Elliott, recently reestablished contact with his relatives -- and he seems very interested in Anne. But Anne suspects that he has ulterior motives... even if she doesn't realize how Frederick truly feels about her. Read more › Also in Slate, Adelle Waldman ranks Jane Austen's works, as well as her most devastating one-liners. Why do so many of Jane Austen’s smartest readers consider her weakest novel to be her best? Persuasion , the story of kind, helpful Anne Elliot—who made a mistake years ago and is still suffering for it when the book opens—is didactic and full of crude, overdrawn characterizations. It is also the least funny of Austen’s books.

The bad characters, whether snobbish, scheming, or hypochondriacal, are unwaveringly bad. (Directed at such easy targets, satire ceases to be satire. It’s more like gawking at roadkill.) The book’s good characters are even worse: boring, smug and, after a while, downright insufferable. Writing about a rough draft of The Watsons , one of Austen’s unfinished books, Virginia Woolf said that “the stiffness and bareness of the first chapters” suggest that “she was one of those writers who lay their facts out rather baldly in the first version and then go back and back and back and cover them with flesh and atmosphere.” Woolf might have been speaking of Persuasion. Published posthumously, it has an almost skeletal feel, like an outline in which only the most salient points about each character are noted, as if Austen didn’t have time to “cover them with flesh.” And yet many people whose taste is generally excellent—including, for instance, Slate’s own Ron Rosenbaum and the literary critics William Deresiewicz and Harold Bloom —consider Persuasion Austen’s best book.

Tastes may simply differ, of course, but I have a theory: I suspect that some readers prize Persuasion because it is superficially more “serious” than Austen’s other novels. Anne Elliot, at 27, is older than her other heroines, who range from their late teens to their early 20s. Her plight is also the saddest. While Austen’s other protagonists are optimistic about their futures, by the time we meet Anne, she feels that her life has been permanently blighted. Seven years before the novel begins, she broke an engagement to the man she loved on the advice of a trusted friend, and she has pined for him ever since. Her day-to-day life as an unattached woman is dreary. She lives with her unpleasant older sister and her father, a vain, unintelligent man, vulgarly proud of his well-preserved good looks and his baronetcy. Her main solace is tending to the children of her silly, self-involved younger sister. It’s hard not to be a little moved by the barrenness of Anne’s life.

Austen herself seemed to be: The mood and setting is autumnal, and the prose is more lyrical than it is in her other novels. Advertisement The somber tone, the sadness of Anne’s situation—those alone may dispose some readers toward Persuasion. Perhaps even some of Austen’s most fervent admirers are a little embarrassed by her comedies of manners and her books’ supposedly trivial subject matter, the way each one ends with the marriage of its heroine. Perhaps these readers hold up Persuasion, with its older, sadder protagonist, as a counterargument to the charge of frivolity. ( Rosenbaum seems to do precisely this .) But Persuasion lacks not only the comic sparkle of Austen’s other novels. It also lacks, relatively speaking, the fineness of observation and the psychological nuance that is enough to make any book—even the fairy-tale-like love story of a teenage girl and a wealthy man—a great one. Austen, who was born in 1775 in a Hampshire village where her father was pastor, never married, and she didn’t publish a novel until she was 35.

(That was Sense and Sensibility; she didn’t sign her name to it.) She published three more before she died just six years later; two additional books were published posthumously. These six novels —as well as a few unfinished drafts and scraps of juvenilia—represent the sum of Austen’s output. But by now almost anyone who lives in any culture anywhere probably knows something about her books. They revolve, famously, around courtship. In all six books, there is scarcely a single death. Illness is rare. (The latter appears as a punishment to teach a lesson in Sense and Sensibility and a tool to bring would-be lovers together in Pride and Prejudice , when a sister’s cold throws Elizabeth into Mr. Darcy’s company.) War, poverty, injustice, and existential soul-searching are all outside their scope. Still, it’s an unsubtle reader who conflates a book’s ostensible subject with its depth. (It’s easy to imagine Pride and Prejudice’s sententious, sermon-reading Mr. Collins making that mistake.) It would be like dismissing Shakespeare as a writer of slapstick because his characters regularly cross-dress so convincingly that they aren’t recognized by their own lovers or parents.

Proof of artistry is rarely located in plot summaries. Admirers make much of Austen’s deadpan tone, her wit, and her irony, and rightly so. But hers isn’t irony for irony’s sake: Austen’s portraits of people and their milieus are animated not by satirical malice or mere eagerness to entertain but by a sense of moral urgency. With a philosophical eye, she sees through fuss and finery and self-justification. She gives us a cast of characters and then zeroes in, showing us who and what is admirable, who is flawed but forgivable, who is risible and who is truly vile. Delivered economically, her judgments are not only clever but perspicacious, humane, and, for the most part, convincing. Her real subject is not the love lives of barely post-adolescent girls, but human nature and society. Austen wrote stories that show us how we think. * * * Advertisement Take Emma , in which Austen is at the height of her powers as both an artist and analyst of human beings.

The novel has very few obvious signifiers of “seriousness.” It’s the story of a young woman blessed with good looks, wealth, intelligence, and an adoring father; the plot revolves around Emma’s attempts to make matches among her friends and her own mild flirtation with a good-looking charmer. It ends with her marriage. Yet for all its apparent frothiness, Emma is a book about a maturing mind, and it is as devoid of melodrama as a postmodern experiment. At one point, the book even dabbles in stream-of-consciousness, with a wonderful monologue that carries the reader through the arc of a morning’s strawberry-picking expedition while deftly sending up the affectations of its speaker. Emma, Austen tells us on the book’s first page, is in danger of “having her own way rather too much and a disposition to think too well of herself.” (Austen is perfectly willing to tell rather than show.) Nonetheless, she then proceeds to give us the world—Emma’s world, that is—from Emma’s point-of-view, deploying the free, indirect third-person, in which the voice of the character blends with that of the author.

We follow Emma as she befriends the hapless Harriet Smith, then breaks up Harriet and her love interest (whom Emma deems unsuitable) and tries to find Harriet a more eligible husband. None of this proceeds according to plan, of course. Emma makes one mistake after another, badly misinterpreting some people and failing to listen to others. And yet she is so clever, so convincing, that, after a while, we begin to see the world as she does. We become complicit in her errors of perception. So when the revelations inevitably occur, it isn’t only Emma who is surprised. We look again—and see the signs that Emma (and we ourselves) misread the first time around—they were there all along. The novel is as well-plotted as a good mystery, but the subject is subtler than that of a whodunit—and the aim is different: It’s not for the pleasure of a dramatic twist that Austen lays her trap; it’s to show us something humbling about our own vulnerability to error and misperception. In initially thinking ourselves superior to Emma, we, too, reveal a disposition to think rather too well of ourselves.

Emma is the most perfect of Austen’s novels in part because the engine of its plot doesn’t run on a single moral lesson—the twin evils of pride and prejudice, the desirability of being sometimes persuadable rather than invariably headstrong, the advantageousness of sense over sensibility. It preaches humility, but it does so humbly. Advertisement For better and for worse, Austen has a strong didactic streak. She was—like Samuel Richardson in the century before and many of the Victorians who followed her—a moralist, who sought to tease out not only psychological truths but life lessons from her stories. And many readers still enjoy Austen’s moralism. Certainly her two most popular novels are also her preachiest. In Sense and Sensibility—which might be subtitled, In Which Sense Unequivocally Trounces Sensibility in All Things—Austen makes the case for Elinor Dashwood’s rational, fair-minded disposition over her sister Marianne’s passionate, “artistic” temperament. Austen’s argument on behalf of sense is astute and morally sensitive; we’d all do well to pay attention to its substance.

But, as literature, the point-making becomes wearying; even the most well-disposed reader may grow crankily contrarian by the 14th or 15th invocation of Elinor’s moral superiority. Austen is too subtle a thinker and too fine a novelist to write a pure morality tale, though; on page after page, her moralizing is leavened by the acid—and greatly entertaining—acuity with which she exposes characters’ hypocrisy and greed and her characteristically sly observations. Of a wealthy socialite’s attitude toward Elinor and Marianne, for instance, she writes: “Because they neither flattered herself nor her children, she could not believe them good-natured; and because they were fond of reading, she fancied them satirical: perhaps without exactly knowing what it was to be satirical; but THAT did not signify. It was censure in common use, and easily given.” Such riffs are not only the most amusing bits in the book, they are also, in an important sense, the most serious: Comedy, when it’s not slapstick, is often moral, a way of showing up what deserves to be shown up.

And what gives Sense and Sensibility depth is not the lesson Austen teaches about sense—which could also be learned at Sunday school (though perhaps less enjoyably). It is Austen’s ability to penetrate minds both narrow and lofty, and to examine, with as much sympathy as shrewdness, the ways we justify our prejudices and our small meannesses. That same ability is evident in Pride and Prejudice, a novel that, oddly if not surprisingly, is now beloved for its Cinderella-like love story, one of the least interesting aspects of the book. It’s a remarkably unsentimental novel, and it is consistently intelligent. It is also, like all of Austen’s books, wonderfully brisk. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” it famously begins. That observation is followed almost immediately with Mrs. Bennet, eager to marry off her daughters, upset that her husband will not visit Mr. Bingley, the single man in question. “You have no compassion on my poor nerves,” she tells him. “You mistake me, my dear,” he replies. “I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends.

I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.” Austen then gives us a fantastically sharp primer on those two people, describing Mr. Bennet as “a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humor, reserve, and caprice,” and his wife as a woman of “mean understanding, little information and uncertain temper” whose “solace was visiting and news.” This quick pace—epigrammatic observation followed by witty banter followed by pithy explication—continues nearly uninterrupted throughout the book, which is entirely devoid of filler or flat exposition. Advertisement Still, Pride and Prejudice is a collection of wonderful characterizations and sharp aphorisms situated adjacent to a delightful romantic plot. It is less deeply unified and, in that way, actually less ambitious than Emma. Or Mansfield Park , for that matter, which, though less perfect than Emma, is perhaps more involving and more powerful. Like Emma, the heroine of Mansfield Park is sometimes hard to like. Unlike Emma, though, Fanny Price is mousy and shy, a poor relation taken in by the Bertrams of Mansfield Park at age 10 in an act of charity conceived of by one of Fanny’s aunts.

Raised alongside wealthy older cousins, Fanny is subject to neglect, some benign, some less so. Her situation compels our sympathy, but she is sometimes self-pitying—and, at times, almost dour. Fanny has an aunt, Mrs. Norris, who, in her humorous awfulness, is one of Austen’s finest creations. She is a whirling, bustling cheapskate, the kind who “excels at dictating liberality to others” while jealously hoarding her own income. This money-consciousness is so natural to Mrs. Norris that it feels normal and just; she is scarcely aware of the insincerity it inspires. When the teenaged Fanny begins to attract attention from a desirable suitor, Mrs. Norris becomes her bitterest enemy, not so much from outright malice but because her sense of the propriety of things is nettled by the sight of the poor relation shining so brightly.

She is a sharply observed study of the kind of malevolence that is masked as a love of order: the desire for things (and people) to be in their correct place, for the world to be arranged in the way that seems to her “fit.” Fanny also has a rival, the charming Mary Crawford, of whom Lionel Trilling wrote, “she impersonates the woman she thinks she ought to be.” I actually think Mary Crawford is the bright, bubbly, and worldly person she presents. But I sympathize with Trilling. We all try to find reasons to dislike Mary because we know she is worldly—surely too worldly. She lacks Fanny’s integrity (though we can’t help thinking she’s less of a pill than Fanny). Though Austen is clearly not a big fan of Mary, she is always fair—careful to grant what is admirable and appealing, even in those characters she dislikes. And so, like Edmund Bertram, we fall in love with the pretty Mary Crawford.

By her painstaking re-creation of Mary’s talk—her witty paragraph-length discourses on the absurdities of country life, the hypocrisy of the clergy, the abominations of her uncle the admiral—Austen makes us feel for Mary what Edmund feels. She once again makes us complicit. That ability to make us complicit is essential to Austen’s art. A moralist can lecture, but a novelist must create lifelike moments that let us experience the consciousness of another. Austen does this so subtly that it can be easy to take for granted. But we notice when it flags. Northanger Abbey centers on Catherine Morland, a good-natured but naïve heroine whose unworldliness leads her to misinterpret much of what she sees. It is, quite literally, a book about reading, as Catherine’s love of gothic novels plays a role in the story. This is much-discussed among academics, but not particularly interesting to those who aren’t seeking material for scholarly articles.

The novel relies heavily on an omniscient narrator, which is telling: While ingenuous Catherine is very likable (confronted with jargon she doesn’t understand, she says, “I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible”), her point-of-view can’t carry a book. It is too limited to a single note; she’s all youthful ignorance and good-hearted credulity. The omniscient narrator, who frequently interjects and interprets the action of the novel, is here not merely as a device but as a way to compensate for a thinness in the story itself. Austen’s analysis is also less sophisticated. Though Northanger Abbey, like Persuasion, appeared after Austen died, she’d written an initial version before she was 25, which she subsequently revised. At one point, she writes that “a woman … if she have the misfortune of knowing any thing, should conceal it as well as she can”—a biting remark, to be sure, and one that contains some truth about social life (now as well as then). But it is a withering adolescent’s partial truth, exaggerated and cocksure in its cynicism.

(In its tone, it is similar to Love and Friendship, the occasionally brilliant but often overdone epistolary novel Austen wrote when she was a teenager. That book, like Northanger Abbey, sends up silly “romantic” conventions like love at first sight and satirizes the kinds of people who make exaggerated professions of feeling.) The wit in Northanger Abbey only appears at first like that which characterizes Austen’s best books. “Mrs. Allen was one of that numerous class of females,” we read, “whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them.” It sounds at first like classic Austen—that deadpan tone—but here her wit is untempered by sympathy or special insight. It is that special insight and sympathy—wide-ranging, philosophical and capable of fine distinctions that elude less sensitive writers—that accounts for so much of the greatness of Emma, Mansfield Park, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility. Austen’s plots may not be serious. They don’t have to be, because her mind unquestionably is.

SparkNotes: Persuasion: Analysis of Major Characters Analysis of Major Characters Themes, Motifs, and Symbols Anne Elliot Anne Elliot, the protagonist of Persuasion, is, like most Austen heroines, witty, clever, and considerate. Austen referred to her in one of her letters as "a heroine who is almost too good for me." Though Austen very frankly notes that the bloom of youth has left Anne, and that she is not the prettiest of the young ladies in the novel, Anne becomes most decidedly more attractive when her better qualities are noted. Anne is proud of her appearance, and she is deeply hurt after overhearing that Captain Wentworth thinks her appearance much changed for the worst. Unlike her father, Anne also takes pride in practicality, intellect, and patience. Anne is feminine while possessing none of what Austen clearly sees as the negative characteristics of her gender; Anne is neither catty, flighty, nor hysterical. On the contrary, she is level-headed in difficult situations and constant in her affections. Such qualities make her the desirable sister to marry; she is the first choice of Charles Musgrove, Captain Wentworth, and Mr. Elliot.

That Anne has her own mind is clear from the way she rebels against the vanity of her father and elder sister. But Anne is not one to avoid her responsibility and duty as a member of the upper class. She understands and respects the importance of making a "suitable" match, and is offended by the prospect of someone as low as Mrs. Clay entering into her family through marriage. She is conscious of the social structure in which her relations operate, and though she may seek a bit more flexibility, she by no means wishes to seriously challenge notions of class. In the end, Anne concludes that she is right to have been persuaded by Lady Russell, even if the advice itself was misguided. The conclusion implies that what might be considered Anne's flaw, her ability to be persuaded by others, is not really a flaw at all. It is left to the reader to agree or disagree with this. But overall, she must be highly regarded; for in her respect for duty and with an independent mind, Anne balances passion and practicality. Sir Walter Elliot Sir Walter acts as a foil to both Captain Wentworth and to Anne Elliot. As a vain, pretentious, and stubborn baronet, he maintains personal qualities that are abhorrent to Austen's protagonists.

Selfish and self-absorbed, he is unable to think past himself and his own immediate desires. Yet Sir Walter is not at all evil or ill-inclined; rather, he is comically ridiculous, a caricature of the old, titled class. Sir Walter allows Austen to poke fun at the declining aristocracy. With the rise of industry in Great Britain beginning in the late eighteenth century, old, titled families were forced to consider accepting the nouveau riche into their circle. Such industrial magnates and wealthy merchants who had made their fortunes trading with the colonies had large amounts of money, and could afford to challenge the importance of birth in social interaction. Sir Walter's strong attachment to the significance of birth appears antiquated in the new century of progress. Sir Walter is an impractical man; his habits of lavish spending and his strong desire to maintain appearances threaten the very future of the Elliot family. This is a grave character flaw, which Anne does not easily forgive. But his vanity is perhaps the defining character of Sir Walter.

With a dressing room surrounded by mirrors, a Baronetage book treasured for its description of the Elliot family, and a predilection to be seen only with attractive and socially important people, Sir Walter is the very image of conceit. Yet, Sir Walter's ridiculousness highlights the fact that his kind is no longer the preferred version of manliness. He is an effeminite man, one who would shy away from the sun for fear of a negative reaction of his complexion. In stark contrast is the gallant, brave naval officer, Captain Wentworth, a very different and more modern ideal of the British gentleman. Captain Frederick Wentworth Captain Wentworth is the prototype of the 'new gentleman.' Maintaining the good manners, consideration, and sensitivity of the older type, Wentworth adds the qualities of gallantry, independence, and bravery that come with being a well- respected Naval officer. He has made his own fortune through hard work and good sense, in direct contrast to Sir Walter who has only wasted the money that came to him through his title. Without land or high birth, Captain Wentworth is not the traditional match for a woman of Anne Eliot's position.

But in true Austenian fashion, his fine personal qualities are enough to surmount the now divide which separates his position from that of Anne. In the novel, Captain Wentworth develops, eventually overcoming his pride and shame at being once refused, in order to make another ardent overture to his chosen bride. This development is a sign of a promising future for their relationship. Like Admiral Croft, who allows his wife to drive the carriage alongside him and to help him steer, Captain Wentworth will defer to Anne throughout their marriage. Austen envisions this kind of equal partnership as the ideal marriage. Persuasion Essay | Jane Austen’s Perfect Heroine: The Use of Reserve in Persuasion | GradeSaver Jane Austen's Perfect Heroine: The Use of Reserve in Persuasion Riki Verlinden Jane Austen's Perfect Heroine: The Use of Reserve in Persuasion "Her character was now fixed on his mind as perfection itself." Jane Austen, Persuasion Anne Elliot is often described as Jane Austen's most mature and perfect heroine; and so she is.

One is disposed to share Captain Wentworth's sentiments when he pronounces Anne's character to be "perfection itself, maintaining the loveliest medium of fortitude and gentleness" (226). Jane Austen's use of reserve in her 1818 novel Persuasion is a device to set her heroine off against the people and society around her, and, most of all, to give Anne an air of perfection. By giving her a reserved character, Anne becomes the antipode of a society with decaying values. Austen speaks out against the attitude of the aristocracy, the inclination of a willful disposition, and a decreasing sense of decorum. Sir Walter Elliot is the embodiment of the declining aristocracy in Regency England, which Anne escapes by marrying someone from the rising professional class. According to Paul Cantor "the aristocracy no longer bases its claim to rule on its intrinsic merit or superiority in virtue, [but n]ow the aristocracy's pre-eminence rests solely on its...

Join Now to View Premium Content GradeSaver provides access to 753 study guide PDFs and quizzes, 4770 literature essays, 1493 sample college application essays, 189 lesson plans, and ad-free surfing in this premium content, “Members Only” section of the site! Membership includes a 10% discount on all editing orders. Beautiful Minds: Jane Austen's Heroines - Telegraph Books Beautiful Minds: Jane Austen's Heroines Jay McInerney, novelist and ladies' man, describes his serial crushes on Jane Austen's heroines - and how they shaped his romantic life Gwyneth Paltrow as the spolied Emma in an adaptation of the Jane Austen novel By Jay McInerney Comments We love Jane Austen through her heroines. Knowing so little about her, we worship her surrogates. And generally speaking, unless we are cranky scholars or celibate critics, we love and rank the novels according to our regard for the female principals.

I can’t help finding my own response to the novels coloured by the degree to which I find the heroines attractive, although over the course of some 30 years of reading and rereading, I find my admiration shifting among the young ladies; unlike Frederick Wentworth, longtime lover of Persuasion’s leading lady Anne Elliot, I could be accused of inconstancy, but I like to think my tastes show an underlying consistency. Like most Austen readers, I first loved Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of Pride and Prejudice, and I loved her more for reminding me of the great love of my freshman year in college, or perhaps it would be just as accurate to say that I loved Christine better for reminding me of Elizabeth. Later, I came under the spell of Emma Woodhouse, the eponymous heroine of Austen’s penultimate novel, believing this to be a more mature love. By the time I read Emma I was a graduate student and I may have been susceptible to the general academic opinion that Emma was the more serious achievement. There is no question, though, that I imagined her to share many desirable qualities, as well as a few not quite so desirable qualities, with my fiancée.

My affections have oscillated between these two most spirited of the Austen protagonists over the course of the years, although just lately, much to my surprise, I have developed a bit of a sneaker for Fanny Price, the diffident heroine of Austen's 1814 novel Mansfield Park. If my actual romantic life has sometimes been influenced by superficial considerations, as an Austen reader the basis of my affections has been almost entirely cerebral. I have fallen under the spell of beautiful minds – though it couldn’t be otherwise, since we seldom get a very precise physical description of our heroines, and they are never the prettiest girls in the neighbourhood. Catherine Morland, the heroine of Northanger Abbey, is the crude prototype of the Austen heroine, a teenage provincial whose worldview, such as it is, has been shaped by her extensive reading of gothic novels. Just 17 years old when she embarks on her first trip beyond the family manor to the great resort of Bath, Catherine is good-natured but gullible. She befriends the duplicitous and supercilious Isabella Thorpe and gradually falls for the wellborn, well-read cleric Henry Tilney.

Though she is not always quick nor erudite enough to understand Tilney, her attraction to him suggests, despite much evidence to the contrary, that she is capable of good judgment. The narrator, who keeps popping up to wink at us, seems determined to exploit Catherine’s lack of experience and infatuation with Romantic fiction for comic effect. When she is invited to the Tilney family seat by Henry’s sister Eleanor, she insists on infusing the environs of Northanger Abbey with gothic menace, and while she seems to be cured of this tendency after a few weeks at the Abbey, the best we can say of young Catherine is that she may someday grow up to be the kind of heroine who populates the later novels. If Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen’s most popular novel, much of the credit belongs to Elizabeth. Smart, funny, by turns passionate and sensible, irreverent and feisty, the second of Mr Bennet’s five daughters embodies virtues that appeal to both sexes. How many female readers have imagined themselves to be just like Mr Darcy’s beloved, and how many male readers have become infatuated with her spirit and her wit?

Unlike Elizabeth’s father, who fell for the future Mrs Bennet solely on the basis of her beauty, male readers have little opportunity to become enamoured with Elizabeth that way. Unlike some of her Victorian counterparts, with their belief in phrenology and their elaborately detailed descriptions of their characters, Austen is not much of a portraitist. We know that Jane Bennet, the eldest, is the great beauty of the family; Mr Bingley, whose arrival in the neighbourhood sets the events of the book in motion, on first meeting declares her “the most beautiful creature I ever beheld”, whereas the first assessment of Elizabeth’s appearance, from Bingley’s great friend Mr Darcy, is unpromising: “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.” Later, on the basis of brief acquaintance, Darcy revises his opinion. “No sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying.

Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing...” This is hardly the stuff of sonnets, nor is it very pictorial, but it allows those of us who are already falling under Elizabeth’s spell the freedom to imagine her as pretty. But she is no prettier than she was a few pages earlier at the dance. Darcy’s improved opinion of her beauty is a function of his growing appreciation for her character. Fanny Price, in Mansfield Park, is the only character in the novel who judges everything and everyone correctly. Virtuous, yes. Is she lovable, or even likeable? That’s the central question that has complicated the response to this beautifully constructed, somewhat stately novel. Is she even plausible to readers 200 years later? Fanny is a child of 10 when she arrives at the home of her rich uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram of Mansfield Park, and for many pages it’s not entirely clear that she is the protagonist.

Neither Sir Thomas, nor his supremely lazy and self-absorbed wife, Lady Bertram, pays much attention to her, while Lady Bertram’s sister Mrs Norris seems determined to keep her in her place and constantly remind her of how unworthy she is of the honour of residing at Mansfield Park. A sturdier plant than Fanny might thrive in this soil, but she is barely able to make her voice heard in this household, which includes four older children, two daughters and two sons. Only Edmund, the second son, takes an active interest in her welfare. He treats her with kindness and takes a hand in her education. “He knew her to be clever,” we are told, “to have a quick apprehension as well as good sense, and a fondness for reading which, properly directed, must be an education in itself.” Fanny’s quickness and good sense are gradually demonstrated, but she is a passive figure through most of the novel who silently observes the folly of her adoptive family: her vain and frivolous cousins, Julia and Maria, their clueless elder brother Tom, and the officious Mrs Norris.

Hers is a kind of negative virtue: she shines in contrast to the others, and by virtue of her superior perception and judgment. But in its first volume, at least, Mansfield Park is effectively a novel without a heroine, a fact that makes it much less inviting than its predecessor. One can’t help suspecting a kind of penitential impulse in the novel and in the righteousness of its heroine, as if Austen were trying to atone for the lightness and the “lack of shade” with which she taxed herself in her previous novel. Reaction, or overreaction, to the previous work is a fairly common impulse in authors and this seems evident in Austen’s oeuvre. It’s hard to imagine that the home performance of a play would have been a scandal in Pride and Prejudice, as it is in Mansfield Park, or that Elizabeth Bennet would have been horrified by the idea. Fanny is a sweet soul, but you wouldn’t want to take her to a party. Emma Woodhouse could hardly be more different than her predecessor: “handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition”.

You can’t help feeling that Austen was a little sick of Fanny’s virtue and modesty, that she is once again reacting against her previous creation. When we meet Emma in her 20th year she has just married off Miss Taylor, her governess and companion of many years (her mother having died when she was very young). “The real evils indeed of Emma’s situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself.” Austen announces Emma’s flaws right at the start and then provides ample evidence of them. If Elizabeth is mistaken mainly in her judgment of Wickham, Emma is constantly misreading character and intention. She self-importantly adopts a foolish young protégé named Harriet Smith, sabotages the girl’s budding romance with a local farmer (beware when your mentor says: “Do not imagine that I want to influence you”), and attempts to set her up with the local vicar, whose interest in her she misreads as interest in her friend. She imagines herself to be the romantic object of Frank Churchill, the handsome and eligible young stepson of her governess Miss Taylor, failing to realise that he’s secretly engaged to her neighbour Jane Fairfax.

And she undervalues Jane, out of jealousy of her beauty and accomplishments. All in all, she’s on the verge of qualifying as a rich bitch. Emma is the only one of Austen’s protagonists who is at certain points viewed from such an objective distance as to nearly become a comic character, as when the narrative describes Emma as “highly esteeming Miss Taylor’s judgment, but directed chiefly by her own”. Austen fluidly moves between an omniscient point of view and the limited third-person perspective of Emma’s consciousness, employing the former partly to compensate for the defects in Emma’s judgment and partly to give us a clearer view of Emma herself. Emma’s flaws are almost flaunted. In the end the list includes heedless cruelty, after she insults the blithering, good-hearted spinster Miss Bates during the expedition to Box Hill. But she deeply regrets and repents this particular sin, and gradually learns to acknowledge and regret all of her mistakes in judgment and comportment. It’s a very cold-hearted reader who isn’t standing by ready to forgive her, or to share Mr Knightley’s feelings when he declares his love.

In the end, for all her flaws she seems far more human than Fanny, and the novel to which she gives her name seems far richer in emotion and more full of life, despite its more limited compass. Emma is the most constricted of all the novels in terms of event and geographic range, if not in amplitude of feeling. Near the end of Mansfield Park we hear that the caddish and inconstant Henry Crawford “lost the woman whom he had rationally, as well as passionately, loved”. Rationally as well as passionately could stand as her prescription for true love. “Critics have remarked that there is no real delineation of true love in Jane Austen and that is true enough,” David Dachies claims in an influential and otherwise sensible essay entitled “Jane Austen, Karl Marx and the Aristocratic Dance”. “Austen knew only too well that in that kind of society genteel young ladies cannot afford true love. The only object must be marriage, and marriage with someone eligible.

In Jane Austen, only the poor can afford passion.” It’s hard to believe a reader of sense could be so preposterously obtuse and misguided, although Charlotte Brontë made a similar argument a hundred years earlier (“The passions are perfectly unknown to her”). For all of their differences, a belief in true love, with passion as its signal component, is precisely what distinguishes Austen heroines from most of their contemporaries. Elizabeth Bennet, when she rejects Mr Darcy’s first proposal, rejects the great estate of Pemberley and £10,000 a year — a far greater prize than her friend Charlotte Lucas sacrificed herself to in accepting the proposal of the odious Mr Collins — for the simple reason that all of her passion is against him. She can’t bring herself to marry Darcy for purely prudent and mercenary reasons. Fanny turns down Henry Crawford, and Anne Elliot in Persuasion turns down Charles Musgrove in large part because passion is missing. But Austen clearly believes that passion without reason is dangerous. There have been some recent attempts to enlist Jane Austen into the Romantic movement, despite the famous disapprobation of Charlotte Brontë.

But Austen would have been appalled by William Blake’s avowal that “those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak enough to be controlled”. Lydia Bennet and Maria Bertram are the pathetic examples of those who let their passion overrule their reason. Given the choice between rationality and emotion, Austen chooses both. And yet, the most important quality that all the Austen protagonists share is a capacity for passion and a commitment to the concept of romantic love. Personally, I’m inclined to be most passionate about those, like Elizabeth and Emma, who are not always perfectly rational and measured, whose passion sometimes gets the better of their reason. This is an edited version of Jay McInerney’s essay in A Truth Universally Acknowledged (Penguin, £20) "Screen Two" Persuasion (TV Episode 1995) - IMDb IMDb Doctor Strange Confirmed to Appear in ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ 21 hours ago There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends.

Error Eight years earlier, Anne Elliot, the daughter of a financially troubled aristocratic family, was persuaded to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a young seaman, who, though ... See full summary » Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 33 titles created 11 Nov 2011 a list of 25 titles created 08 Jul 2012 a list of 34 titles created 04 Mar 2013 a list of 35 titles created 10 Mar 2015 a list of 27 titles created 01 May 2015 Search for " Persuasion " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Title: Persuasion (16 Apr 1995) 7.7/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. 7 wins & 2 nominations.

See more awards » Videos Edit Storyline Eight years earlier, Anne Elliot, the daughter of a financially troubled aristocratic family, was persuaded to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a young seaman, who, though promising, had poor family connections. When her father rents out the family estate to Admiral Croft, Anne is thrown into company with Frederick, because his sister is Mrs. Croft. Frederick is now a rich and successful Captain, and a highly eligible bachelor. Whom will he marry? One of Anne's sister's husband's sisters? Or will he and Anne rekindle the old flame? Written by John Oswalt <jao@jao.com> Rated PG for brief mild language | See all certifications » Parents Guide: 16 April 1995 (UK) See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia The sage-green Spencer with white cuffs Amanda Root (Anne Elliot) wears on the street in Bath is the same costume Sally Hawkins (Anne Elliot) wears in the final scene of Persuasion (2007). The jacket is also worn by an extra at the salon in Byron (2003).

See more » Goofs Several pieces by Chopin are used, but Chopin was only born 5 years before this was set. See more » Quotes Anne Elliot : Are you here for the concert? Captain Wentworth : No, I am here for a lecture on navigation. Am I in the wrong place? Beautifully observed portrayal of Jane Austen's mature tale of devotion 14 February 2002 | by Filmtribute (United Kingdom) – See all my reviews Following in the BBC's fine tradition of producing outstanding costume dramas through the 1970's and 1980's, including versions of Jane Austen's novels, this Bafta award-winning co-production, with WGBH and Sony amongst others, of `Persuasion' (her final complete work published mid rewrite in 1818, the year after her death), was made in 1995 with a stellar cast of British stage actors, many from the Royal Shakespeare Company with numerous TV credits. The film's events converge on the time Napoleon has been banished to Elba and the Battle of Waterloo of 1815 is still a year away.

Among the servicemen returning home is Captain Frederick Wentworth (Ciaran Hinds) who has been at sea for eight years since Anne Elliot's (Amanda Root) rejection of his marriage proposal. The Captain is now a man of prosperity and social rank while his former nineteen-year-old love interest has matured into a faded and thin' old maid of twenty-seven in service to her family. Anne has lived to regret her mistake in being persuaded by her friend and patroness, Lady Russell (Susan Fleetwood, `Heat and Dust', who sadly died the year `Persuasion' was released), to refuse Wentworth as a man of unsuitable temperament. Whilst his affection would now seem to be directed towards her brother-in-law's sister, Louisa Musgrove (Emma Roberts), Anne's only romantic hope lies in the dubious and underhand attentions of her cousin William Elliot (an obsequious Samuel West, who was memorably the ill-fated Leonard Bast in `Howards End'). However, the accident on the Cobb at Lyme Regis requires Anne's sensible advice on how to handle the crisis and eventually leads to a second chance for her.

Incidentally the Cobb was to play another starring role in John Fowles' `The French Lieutenant's Woman', with Karel Reisz' 1981 dramatic movie version embellishing it with a strikingly cloaked Meryl Streep braving the elements, ensuring that it will remain a tourist attraction in perpetuity. Ostensibly with concern over the intellectual inequality of Captain Benwick's sudden attachment to Louisa after the accident, Captain Wentworth makes the impassioned declaration to Anne regarding his friend's broken hearted loss of his fiancee: `A man does not recover from such a devotion to such a woman, he ought not, he does not', but is patently reflecting on his own lasting strong feelings for Anne. Surely it is wiser to recognise when adoration for one person is no longer appropriate and a chance may lie with someone else. The supposed difference between the sexes regarding fidelity is discussed with Jane Austen adding the comment to her argument that the authors who view women as more fickle, have all been men.

This last remark in the film is rather improbably but modernly given to Anne, who also makes the bold claim for her sex that it is capable of `loving longest when all hope is gone.' It is not a question of gender but of genetic makeup and whether you are truly monogamous, as Western religions and society would decree us to be, or true to yourself. Although comfortable, life must have been dreadfully dull at times for the women in this world who could not relieve their tedium as their menfolk would by going off to war. This observation is endorsed by the couple of scenes depicting a concert and an evening of card playing, tinged with amber candle light infusing gentle nostalgic warmth to the proceedings which is at odds with the atmosphere of bored ritualistic entertainment. The different levels of lighting are used to subtle effect here and contrast with the cold glare of Ang Lee's brilliantly lit interiors in his working of Austen's first novel `Sense and Sensibility', also produced in the same year.

Amanda Root (`Mortimer's Law', and as Fanny Price, another of Austen's independent women, in `Mansfield Park' for BBC Radio 4) is brilliant as the quiet understated heroine with luminosity to her face that beautifully transcribes the full gamut of emotions she experiences from servitude to the blossoming of love. Her co-star, Ciaran Hinds (`The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover') is equally gifted of expression, with a barely repressed anger and resentment towards Anne, under the guise of curt civility that eventually he is forced to recognise masks his continuing passion for her. Interestingly over the next two years both leads went onto appear in different versions of Jane Eyre, with Amanda Root well cast as the kindly schoolteacher Miss Temple in Franco Zeffirelli's 1996 version and Ciaran Hinds as a suitably anguished Mr Rochester in Robert Young's 1997 TV adaptation. Jane Austen's fable may be recognised as the classic fairy tale of Cinderella, of a good hearted and dutiful daughter put upon by her foolish and snobbish father and cruel sisters, but who is eventually saved by her true prince.

With great effect, the author adds to the romance her wit and sense of humour to explore the characteristics of the genteel world she lived in with all its human frailties. Nick Dear's screenplay, together with Roger Michell's necessarily less frantic direction than in `Notting Hill', adroitly captures the essence of Austen's narrative to provide one of the finest visual interpretations of her work. Strong supporting performances are also given by the ensemble of Corin Redgrave (`Enigma') as the supercilious father; Sophie Thompson (`Emma') and Phoebe Nicholls (`The Elephant Man') as the far from ugly sisters of hypochondriac Mary and haughty Elizabeth; and Fiona Shaw (`Jane Eyre') and John Woodvine (`Wuthering Heights') as the companionable Crofts. Obviously complying with its `Beautiful People' culture the original cover of the American video version replaced the demure leads with two glamorous models, as a spokeswoman for Columbia Tristar in California has said, `I guess to make it a little more seductive to us over here'.

Nonetheless, it is pleasing to read that this film was well received in the States especially as it remained true to its British identity, and therefore set an exemplary standard in not pandering to an anticipated overseas market by using well-known international stars. 70 of 80 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Jane Austen, Persuasion Jane Austen, Persuasion Share Intro The much-loved novels of Jane Austen (1775-1817) explore the complexities of genteel English society, and the relationship between wealth, love and freedom of thought for women. On the surface, Austen’s works may seem like pure love stories in which women search for romance. But the novels are powerful social commentaries, which reflect so many of the restrictions placed on women at the time. It must be remembered that the prospects for a woman who did not find a husband could be terrifying, both in terms of her social reputation and her financial stability. This is part of the manuscript of Persuasion, Austen's final completed book, published after her death in 1818. The heroine, Anne Elliot is 27 and still unmarried.

She had been forced as a young woman to break off her engagement to her lover, a man her family felt was neither distinguished or wealthy enough for her. It is possible that the novel reflected aspects of Austen's own life. Shelfmark: Egerton MS 3038, ff. 9v - 10. Image Can't play the file above? Listen to the audio clip here Transcript Chapter 11. Who can be in doubt of what followed?—When any two young People take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other's ultimate Comfort. This may be bad Morality to conclude with, but I believe it to be Truth—and if such parties succeed, how should a Capt. W_ and an Anne E_, with the advantage of maturity of Mind, consciousness of Right, and one Independent Fortune between them, fail of bearing down every opposition? They might in fact, have borne down a great deal more than they met with, for there was little to distress them beyond the want of Graciousness and Warmth. Sir W.

made no objection, and Elizabeth did nothing worse than look cold and unconcerned.—Capt. W_with £25, 000—and as high in his Profession as Merit and Activity could place him, was no longer nobody. He was now esteemed quite worthy to address the Daughter of a foolish, spendthrift Baronet, who had not had Principle or Sense enough to maintain himself in the situation in which Providence had placed him, and who could give his Daughter but a small part of the share of ten thousand pounds which must be hers hereafter.—Sir Walter, indeed, tho' he had no affection for his Daughter, and no vanity flattered to make him really happy on the occasion, was very far from thinking it a bad match for her. On the contrary, when he saw more of Capt. W._, and eyed him well, he was very much struck by his personal claims, and felt that his Superiority of appearance might be not unfairly balanced against her superiority of Rank;—And all this, together with his well-sounding name, enabled Sir W. at last to prepare his pen with a very good grace, for the insertion of the Marriage in the volume of Honour.—

Question: Who is the heroine of Jane Austin’s Persuasion?
Answer: ANNE ELLIOT